Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Romania’s government will seek to
annul an environmental permit for a gold mine project owned by
Canada’s Eldorado Gold Corp because of irregularities in the use
of cyanide, Prime Minister Victor Ponta said.

The cabinet started legal proceedings to cancel the permit
issued by the regional agency for environmental protection in
the western Timisoara county for Eldorado’s Certej mining
project, Ponta said on his Facebook Inc. page today.

“The Environment Minister has informed us that this permit
for the Certej area was issued without respecting the legal
procedures and clearly it will be annulled,” Ponta said.

Romania’s Environment Ministry said on Sept. 3 it started
an “emergency” investigation of the Certej gold mine project
environmental permit. Minister Rovana Plumb also asked for the
head of the local environmental agency to be fired because he
failed to inform the ministry about the issuance of a permit for
a project of “national and international interest.”

Non-profit organizations, including Alburnus Maior, issued
a statement the same day challenging the permit, citing “an
extremely dangerous precedent for Romania,” because of
environmental issues caused by using cyanide to extract gold.